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Dinos and Druids, A Tasty Romp through Table Top Games

Posts

Because Im home sick, I took a quick pass at a witch subclass for Warlock. I'm also looking at a witch subclass for Druid and Bard

Haven't really thought about balance at all, so far its just a sketch of the ideas

The Otherworld Patron - The Crone

Expanded spell list

1st level:
Bane
Find Familiar

2nd level
Blindness/Deafness
Alter Self

3rd level
Leomund's Tiny Hut
Bestow Curse

4th level
Blight
Arcane Eye

5th Level
Contagion
Insect Plague

Evil Eye
Starting at 1st level, when casting the spell Bane, for one creature targeted the initial save against Bane is affected as if the creature's had failed against the charisma save for Bane.

Once per long rest, when a hostile creature affected by your Bane spell is reduced to 0 hit points, you gain a point of inspiration until your next short rest.

Creaky Delivery Service
At 6th level, once per long rest as an ritual cast over 5 minutes you may enchant a broom, staff, or long branch to be able to carry you and a familiar and while carrying you, it has a flying speed of 30 ft for up to 10 minutes.

Chicken Hut
Starting at 10th level, when you cast Leomund's Tiny Hut, you may have it take the form of a hut on chicken legs instead. Up to 9 people can fit inside the chicken hut. While you are awake and inside the hut, it has a walking speed of 60 ft. It has 50 HP, is immune to Psychic damage and vulnerable to fire damage. If it takes its full hp in damage while at least one foot is on the ground, the inhabitants and contents are deposited safely onto the ground. You also gain resistance to necrotic damage and cold damage.

Final Cackle
Starting at 14th level, when you roll a death save, all hostile creatures within 60 ft must make a Charisma saving throw. Whenever a creature fails this saving throw, they are affected as if the spell Bane had been cast on them but with a d6 penalty instead of a d4. If the creature is already affected by one of your concentration spells and fails the Charisma saving throw, you automatically succeed you death save.

Starting at 14th level, whenever you use Creaky Delivery Service feature, the effect on the broom lasts until your next long rest instead of 10 minutes.

I remember liking Wraith a bunch conceptually, but a lot of the World of Darkness stuff that isn't part of the core group tends to have some things that feel shoehorned in or unnecessarily complex for the sake of being complex.

Edit: To expand on this, I would generally say that the first three World of Darkness games work. They have some weirdness to them, sure, but they're still essentially functional. The system was designed around vampires, but the extensions to werewolves and mages are logical and still seem like they should function within the same ruleset as this game that was originally designed around vampires.

Beyond that, it's a mixed success. I'm very fond of Changeling, but I've also tried to play some first edition Changeling, and I'm not sure if it works straight out of the book. See also Wraith and Demon, although I've not actually tried to play those. I think both the system and the setting/tone of World of Darkness get stretched real thin with the later games, as they try to make everything work as a game in its own right while still being essentially compatible with everything else they've released thus far.

I remember liking Wraith a bunch conceptually, but a lot of the World of Darkness stuff that isn't part of the core group tends to have some things that feel shoehorned in or unnecessarily complex for the sake of being complex.

Edit: To expand on this, I would generally say that the first three World of Darkness games work. They have some weirdness to them, sure, but they're still essentially functional. The system was designed around vampires, but the extensions to werewolves and mages are logical and still seem like they should function within the same ruleset as this game that was originally designed around vampires.

Beyond that, it's a mixed success. I'm very fond of Changeling, but I've also tried to play some first edition Changeling, and I'm not sure if it works straight out of the book. See also Wraith and Demon, although I've not actually tried to play those. I think both the system and the setting/tone of World of Darkness get stretched real thin with the later games, as they try to make everything work as a game in its own right while still being essentially compatible with everything else they've released thus far.

I like the idea of Demon the best because it's working with some really fun (and bizarrely underused) mythology. I like a lot of the core mechanics of how Demon works, but then you hit the point of the book where it's like "And there were seven houses, The Fightguys, The Silly Clowns, The Big Mabels, Colloquial Ted, The Bumble Squad, Crispy Mister Robin and Flop." and each house is divided into seven subgroups or whatever who cares. It was a little formulaic.

The problem I have with Wraith is that it's throwing all of its jargon at me before giving me a reason to be interested. Like "here's the geography of the great city of Stygia and the secret meanings of the masks they wear" and I don't even really have a clear idea of what it means to be a wraith yet. I think of all the settings, Wraith probably needed it's own setting the least because all the interesting shit is how you interact with your old life. There's been a big bit about Wraith slavery too which is a downer even for a game about ghosties.

For years and years I was someone who could only read the fiction, so I enjoyed that stuff a lot. My main problems with it are that you have to get me interested first (which Wraith had a problem with) and the Onyx Path anniversary editions are obsessed with putting the text in totally unreadable "realistic" fonts. Like tell me it's a letter and then just type it out, I'll get it.

The Demon: The Descent from Onyx Path was really cool to me, and really ran with the God Machine myth is they had, and was pretty fun to tinker with.

I’ve finally started diving into Changeling: The Lost 2nd edition and loving it so far. They’ve ironed out a lot of the kinks from 1st edition, expanded the flavor o loss and trauma the original game ran with, and is oozing flavor. I also appreciate that the introduction has a conversation about the themes of the book being very heavy (dealing with trauma, loss, abuse, and the like) and therefore they have a small talk about blundaries, discussing what you want the story to be about, respecting each other, hoping the book can be a healthy place for people to explore those themes, and referencing a section of a later chapter for everyone to read about how to build up those safe play techniques to make this game fun and not harmful for other players. I haven’t read that chapter yet to see how it plays out in the book, but I appreciate them taking the subject matter seriously.

Demon The Descent gets a lot of credit from me for being about the most bonkers premise that I have ever seen for anything, ever. I would definitely prefer a biblical mythology version, but The Descent is just... hoo boy. So glad it got made, no desire to play it.

The Descent is great, although I feel like it doesn't play super well with the rest of the World of Darkness, which is weird given that nWoD was at least partially intended to make the various games come from a more unified structure.

Changeling: The Lost is a game that I can recognize is a hundred percent better than The Dreaming was, but also doesn't scratch the itch that The Dreaming ignited in me, so I bear it a weird grudge there. It's a good game, it recognizes what it is about way better than The Dreaming ever did and it capitalizes on that to great effect, but I miss the kiths from before.

also undead backed protection would probably be at big banks. local branches in the suburbs probably aren't nearly important enough to waste such a thing on. maybe it has armed guards, but that's probably about it.

unless there was a secret artifact stored there. or something dramatic.

Iunno, i am spit balling ideas hoping someone wants to run with these, because that is how i operate.

"Man, it would be cool to have some little wink to the old ages, with all the ruin and stuff, wouldn't it. Like remnants of an ancient Gondolin outpost or something or a carven bit commemorating a battle in the ancient age or something..."
"...oh, wait, right, pretty much every single place and thing that is ever mentioned in the Silmarillion got sunk. No ancient easter eggs for me. Damnit"

Mokdorans!
They’re humongous whale-like creatures that always have their mouths open, so folk use them as moving bars and hotels.
They’re made of a metal that is constantly on the verge of melting on the outside, but their insides are super cold.
Legends say they were breed by some mad earth plane warlord for use in an invasion, but now they just float around.

Invocation: Grip of Shadow
Prerequisite: Pact of the Blade feature
You may now use your Pact of the Blade feature to create up to 3 Pact Weapons, or to transform up to 3 magic weapons into Pact Weapons.
When you use your Pact of the Blade feature to create or conjure Pact Weapons, you may summon any number of them as an Action, a single Pact Weapon as a Free Action, or two Pact Weapons with the Light property as a Bonus Action (or two of any one-handed weapon if you also have the Dual Wielder feat).

Invocation: Shadowfell Attunement
Prerequisite: Improved Pact of the Blade Invocation
While you are wielding a Pact Weapon of any kind, you may ignore the somatic components of any Warlock spell you cast.
When attacking with any number of ranged weapons, you may ignore the loading and ammunition properties of any weapon you are wielding, and do not require a free hand to load ammunition into your ranged weapons. In addition, ammunition fired from your Pact Weapons count as magical for the purposes of overcoming damage resistance or immunity.
In addition, you may now conjure one-handed ranged weapons with your Pact of the Blade feature, such as Hand Crossbows, and transform such weapons into Pact Weapons.

the first one could do with a better name, but I enjoy the second one since it riffs off the source of a Hexblade's power. They could both probably use a bit of tuning, like a level requirement or suchlike.

the first one is solid, but the second needs some work

improved pact weapon lets you use your pact weapon as a spell focus already, AND treats all summoned weapons at +1 (it also lets you summon any ranged weapon except a hand crossbow, weirdly enough)

also pact weapons are treated as magical from the getgo

the big thing the second gives you is the hand crossbow stuff and free reloads (which is fucking rad, and saves a feat slot) - if it brought something else novel to the table I'd say it's be 100% good (maybe something related to negating cover or concealment via darkness?)

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It does present the issue of setting up adventures, though. Like the game suggests doing things like having the players go out to face things threatening villages, but there are no villages. There is mention of merchants but how in the balls can you have merchants in a place where there seems to be, far as I can tell, only one road that is actually still kind of a road and basically no centers of population with anything worth trading (because we know the Hobbits of the Shire don't trade for shit) between the Lhun and the Misty Mountains. There is, far as I can tell, nothing at all, to a point that it's honestly a bit disbelief-breaking that, like, Bree exists in its current form.

My plan is to straight up start making up a lot of settlements. Humans have this annoying tendency to set up anywhere where there is space and tillable soil, and Arnor fell a thousand years ago. There has been time for people to start trying to move back in.

Where is your game set? If you are using Rhovanion, then do you have the setting (Heart of the Wild, iirc) supplement?

You are right that there aren’t, like, huge cities around, but there are plenty of opportunities to help merchants setup trade routes between the Dale / Erebor / Laketown triangle and places like the three ‘major’ Woodman settlements, the Iron Hills, and the Carrock. This especially works early in the timeline after the Battle of the Give Armies when the shadow retreats from Dol Guldur after being confronted by the White Council.

"The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." -- Jack Kirby

Invocation: Grip of Shadow
Prerequisite: Pact of the Blade feature
You may now use your Pact of the Blade feature to create up to 3 Pact Weapons, or to transform up to 3 magic weapons into Pact Weapons.
When you use your Pact of the Blade feature to create or conjure Pact Weapons, you may summon any number of them as an Action, a single Pact Weapon as a Free Action, or two Pact Weapons with the Light property as a Bonus Action (or two of any one-handed weapon if you also have the Dual Wielder feat).

Invocation: Shadowfell Attunement
Prerequisite: Improved Pact of the Blade Invocation
While you are wielding a Pact Weapon of any kind, you may ignore the somatic components of any Warlock spell you cast.
When attacking with any number of ranged weapons, you may ignore the loading and ammunition properties of any weapon you are wielding, and do not require a free hand to load ammunition into your ranged weapons. In addition, ammunition fired from your Pact Weapons count as magical for the purposes of overcoming damage resistance or immunity.
In addition, you may now conjure one-handed ranged weapons with your Pact of the Blade feature, such as Hand Crossbows, and transform such weapons into Pact Weapons.

the first one could do with a better name, but I enjoy the second one since it riffs off the source of a Hexblade's power. They could both probably use a bit of tuning, like a level requirement or suchlike.

the first one is solid, but the second needs some work

improved pact weapon lets you use your pact weapon as a spell focus already, AND treats all summoned weapons at +1 (it also lets you summon any ranged weapon except a hand crossbow, weirdly enough)

also pact weapons are treated as magical from the getgo

the big thing the second gives you is the hand crossbow stuff and free reloads (which is fucking rad, and saves a feat slot) - if it brought something else novel to the table I'd say it's be 100% good (maybe something related to negating cover or concealment via darkness?)

Improved Pact weapon doesn't help you with spells that don't have material components, though, so this would effectively allow you to dual-wield anything and still cast any spell without having to put stuff away. Also means you can cast while paralysed or grappled or otherwise unable to move! Similarly I don't believe ammunition is automatically given magical status just because the ranged weapon is magical, so this shores up that weakness too? But yea, could use some sort of tweak there I think

Invocation: Grip of Shadow
Prerequisite: Pact of the Blade feature
You may now use your Pact of the Blade feature to create up to 3 Pact Weapons, or to transform up to 3 magic weapons into Pact Weapons.
When you use your Pact of the Blade feature to create or conjure Pact Weapons, you may summon any number of them as an Action, a single Pact Weapon as a Free Action, or two Pact Weapons with the Light property as a Bonus Action (or two of any one-handed weapon if you also have the Dual Wielder feat).

Invocation: Shadowfell Attunement
Prerequisite: Improved Pact of the Blade Invocation
While you are wielding a Pact Weapon of any kind, you may ignore the somatic components of any Warlock spell you cast.
When attacking with any number of ranged weapons, you may ignore the loading and ammunition properties of any weapon you are wielding, and do not require a free hand to load ammunition into your ranged weapons. In addition, ammunition fired from your Pact Weapons count as magical for the purposes of overcoming damage resistance or immunity.
In addition, you may now conjure one-handed ranged weapons with your Pact of the Blade feature, such as Hand Crossbows, and transform such weapons into Pact Weapons.

the first one could do with a better name, but I enjoy the second one since it riffs off the source of a Hexblade's power. They could both probably use a bit of tuning, like a level requirement or suchlike.

the first one is solid, but the second needs some work

improved pact weapon lets you use your pact weapon as a spell focus already, AND treats all summoned weapons at +1 (it also lets you summon any ranged weapon except a hand crossbow, weirdly enough)

also pact weapons are treated as magical from the getgo

the big thing the second gives you is the hand crossbow stuff and free reloads (which is fucking rad, and saves a feat slot) - if it brought something else novel to the table I'd say it's be 100% good (maybe something related to negating cover or concealment via darkness?)

Improved Pact weapon doesn't help you with spells that don't have material components, though, so this would effectively allow you to dual-wield anything and still cast any spell without having to put stuff away. Also means you can cast while paralysed or grappled or otherwise unable to move! Similarly I don't believe ammunition is automatically given magical status just because the ranged weapon is magical, so this shores up that weakness too? But yea, could use some sort of tweak there I think

as far as I know spell focus' cover all material components - that's somatic, actual matter, and probably verbal as long the spell isn't something that 100% requires a spoken word

that's how we've treated it so far in our group

also ammunition is considered magical for overcoming resistance as long as its fired from a magic weapon

otherwise that's a huge penalty to ranged weapons since it costs a lot of money to fire magic ammo on the regular

edit: of course, anything with a gold cost also isn't covered by a spell focus

Doobh on February 11

Miss me? Find me on:

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Invocation: Grip of Shadow
Prerequisite: Pact of the Blade feature
You may now use your Pact of the Blade feature to create up to 3 Pact Weapons, or to transform up to 3 magic weapons into Pact Weapons.
When you use your Pact of the Blade feature to create or conjure Pact Weapons, you may summon any number of them as an Action, a single Pact Weapon as a Free Action, or two Pact Weapons with the Light property as a Bonus Action (or two of any one-handed weapon if you also have the Dual Wielder feat).

Invocation: Shadowfell Attunement
Prerequisite: Improved Pact of the Blade Invocation
While you are wielding a Pact Weapon of any kind, you may ignore the somatic components of any Warlock spell you cast.
When attacking with any number of ranged weapons, you may ignore the loading and ammunition properties of any weapon you are wielding, and do not require a free hand to load ammunition into your ranged weapons. In addition, ammunition fired from your Pact Weapons count as magical for the purposes of overcoming damage resistance or immunity.
In addition, you may now conjure one-handed ranged weapons with your Pact of the Blade feature, such as Hand Crossbows, and transform such weapons into Pact Weapons.

the first one could do with a better name, but I enjoy the second one since it riffs off the source of a Hexblade's power. They could both probably use a bit of tuning, like a level requirement or suchlike.

the first one is solid, but the second needs some work

improved pact weapon lets you use your pact weapon as a spell focus already, AND treats all summoned weapons at +1 (it also lets you summon any ranged weapon except a hand crossbow, weirdly enough)

also pact weapons are treated as magical from the getgo

the big thing the second gives you is the hand crossbow stuff and free reloads (which is fucking rad, and saves a feat slot) - if it brought something else novel to the table I'd say it's be 100% good (maybe something related to negating cover or concealment via darkness?)

Improved Pact weapon doesn't help you with spells that don't have material components, though, so this would effectively allow you to dual-wield anything and still cast any spell without having to put stuff away. Also means you can cast while paralysed or grappled or otherwise unable to move! Similarly I don't believe ammunition is automatically given magical status just because the ranged weapon is magical, so this shores up that weakness too? But yea, could use some sort of tweak there I think

as far as I know spell focus' cover all material components - that's somatic, actual matter, and probably verbal as long the spell isn't something that 100% requires a spoken word

that's how we've treated it so far in our group

also ammunition is considered magical for overcoming resistance as long as its fired from a magic weapon

otherwise that's a huge penalty to ranged weapons since it costs a lot of money to fire magic ammo on the regular

Nah technically the spell focus only removes the need for material components you would use a component bag for, not somatic or verbal parts. So a pact weapon allows you to use it to cast a spell that has material components, but not a spell without them. It's dumb, so I tossed that onto that invocation

turns out they errated the ammunition thing (just googled it), because I found it heavily implied in the PHB that it didn't work that way. A good change though.

A friend of mine is creating some Heroic Cultures for a 1st Age game? Men of the Edain, Noldorin Elf, Dwarf of the Blue Mountains etc

I honestly think it could be a fantastic setting for some heroic ancient anglo-saxon/norse style fantasy. You've got plenty of gaps in the history where stuff is happening, you've got loads of great antagonists and NPCs who can be both allies and enemies, a rich setting with lots of places to go and explore but with a lot of map you can just put in etc

I disagree with that? the spell focus rules are designed specifically so a paladin or cleric can wear a holy symbol while using a sword and shield

it would be weird to have it work different with different classes, especially with 5e's focus on simplicity

It's a weird fuckin nit pick in the rules.

Foci can be used for spells with cheap material components and stand in for the somatic components for those spells... if a spell doesn't have material components you can't use a foci to perform the somatic component. It's kinda dumb, but Crawford confirmed it in sage advice. I just say screw yhat rule and let foci get used for somatic components in all cases.

the idea is that the spell focus only replaces material components- nothing else- but when you cast a spell using material components (with or without a spell focus) the same hand that uses the focus/materials can also do the gestures. A spell that has no material components doesn't use a spell focus at all, so you need to have a hand free for its somatic components.

It's dumb as hell and really weird, but it's apparently how it's meant to work.

It does present the issue of setting up adventures, though. Like the game suggests doing things like having the players go out to face things threatening villages, but there are no villages. There is mention of merchants but how in the balls can you have merchants in a place where there seems to be, far as I can tell, only one road that is actually still kind of a road and basically no centers of population with anything worth trading (because we know the Hobbits of the Shire don't trade for shit) between the Lhun and the Misty Mountains. There is, far as I can tell, nothing at all, to a point that it's honestly a bit disbelief-breaking that, like, Bree exists in its current form.

My plan is to straight up start making up a lot of settlements. Humans have this annoying tendency to set up anywhere where there is space and tillable soil, and Arnor fell a thousand years ago. There has been time for people to start trying to move back in.

Where is your game set? If you are using Rhovanion, then do you have the setting (Heart of the Wild, iirc) supplement?

You are right that there aren’t, like, huge cities around, but there are plenty of opportunities to help merchants setup trade routes between the Dale / Erebor / Laketown triangle and places like the three ‘major’ Woodman settlements, the Iron Hills, and the Carrock. This especially works early in the timeline after the Battle of the Give Armies when the shadow retreats from Dol Guldur after being confronted by the White Council.

Rhovanion definitely has a lot more going on than, say, Eriador

Eriador does have some small places around and about but after Bree until Rivendell there's absolutely fuck all named settlements on the road. Which does seem a little silly at first? Like why don't people move into these places? But actually it kind of makes sense to an extent because a lot of Eriador is wilderness and by Wilderness I mean Trolls, Barrow-Wights, occasional Goblins and Wargs etc. Like in Middle Earth you can't just go and settle somewhere empty and maybe deal with bears and wolves at worst, there's actively intelligent evil creatures around that will murder the shit out of you.

It does present the issue of setting up adventures, though. Like the game suggests doing things like having the players go out to face things threatening villages, but there are no villages. There is mention of merchants but how in the balls can you have merchants in a place where there seems to be, far as I can tell, only one road that is actually still kind of a road and basically no centers of population with anything worth trading (because we know the Hobbits of the Shire don't trade for shit) between the Lhun and the Misty Mountains. There is, far as I can tell, nothing at all, to a point that it's honestly a bit disbelief-breaking that, like, Bree exists in its current form.

My plan is to straight up start making up a lot of settlements. Humans have this annoying tendency to set up anywhere where there is space and tillable soil, and Arnor fell a thousand years ago. There has been time for people to start trying to move back in.

Where is your game set? If you are using Rhovanion, then do you have the setting (Heart of the Wild, iirc) supplement?

You are right that there aren’t, like, huge cities around, but there are plenty of opportunities to help merchants setup trade routes between the Dale / Erebor / Laketown triangle and places like the three ‘major’ Woodman settlements, the Iron Hills, and the Carrock. This especially works early in the timeline after the Battle of the Give Armies when the shadow retreats from Dol Guldur after being confronted by the White Council.

Rhovanion definitely has a lot more going on than, say, Eriador

Eriador does have some small places around and about but after Bree until Rivendell there's absolutely fuck all named settlements on the road. Which does seem a little silly at first? Like why don't people move into these places? But actually it kind of makes sense to an extent because a lot of Eriador is wilderness and by Wilderness I mean Trolls, Barrow-Wights, occasional Goblins and Wargs etc. Like in Middle Earth you can't just go and settle somewhere empty and maybe deal with bears and wolves at worst, there's actively intelligent evil creatures around that will murder the shit out of you.

this is really making me want to play Lord of the Rings Online again

I think they had to get mildly creative and delve really deep into minor mentions of stuff in the official lore to make some tiny settlements or outposts or camps in some areas, but yeah there is definitely a portion of the world where you go and there's just no major settlements of any sort there.

also, hey, not gonna name names but a certain serial harasser tied to TTRPGs is in the news again for some not so good reasons

I recommend looking it up and maybe taking an active stance where you can in bringing down any influence he has in the industry, if at all possible

I hate being vague, but there's a reason for it

So Dubh let me know the specifics and I think they're ok to share.

Zak Sabbath has been accused by his long time girlfriend of a serious pattern of abuse and repeated incidence of assaults on other people, both sexual and physical. She does, however, say in the post that she didn't want her account circulated outside her circle of friends (which it obviously has been) so I don't know if it's ethical to repost them here. They're out there if you want to google them, it's pretty gross stuff.

It does present the issue of setting up adventures, though. Like the game suggests doing things like having the players go out to face things threatening villages, but there are no villages. There is mention of merchants but how in the balls can you have merchants in a place where there seems to be, far as I can tell, only one road that is actually still kind of a road and basically no centers of population with anything worth trading (because we know the Hobbits of the Shire don't trade for shit) between the Lhun and the Misty Mountains. There is, far as I can tell, nothing at all, to a point that it's honestly a bit disbelief-breaking that, like, Bree exists in its current form.

My plan is to straight up start making up a lot of settlements. Humans have this annoying tendency to set up anywhere where there is space and tillable soil, and Arnor fell a thousand years ago. There has been time for people to start trying to move back in.

Where is your game set? If you are using Rhovanion, then do you have the setting (Heart of the Wild, iirc) supplement?

You are right that there aren’t, like, huge cities around, but there are plenty of opportunities to help merchants setup trade routes between the Dale / Erebor / Laketown triangle and places like the three ‘major’ Woodman settlements, the Iron Hills, and the Carrock. This especially works early in the timeline after the Battle of the Give Armies when the shadow retreats from Dol Guldur after being confronted by the White Council.

Yeah, thing is, we're probably going to set this on the other side of the Misty Mountains. Hence my annoyance.

And the "well there's orcs" thing doesn't really fly that much for any of us, because, well, there really aren't for a large chunk of the map. Cardolan and northwest Eregion are perfectly reasonable and pleasantly-weathered chunks of land with rivers and forests, where for some reason nobody has settled since Arnor fell a thousand years ago (the barrows with barrow wights are all the way next to the Shire, there's plenty of space to live without camping near those!). And the only road that still exists goes straight through troll country anyway, so clearly people are willing to brave orcs and trolls in any case.

So do you guys even track spell components? Like we have a bard in our party, and my rule is that the instrument is his foci and his music is the spell, so he doesn't need components for lower level spells (if he ever gets to the big stuff, yes he needs the diamonds or whatever) but he has to be able to perform in some way